All of these people were the sort to “fight the good fight” and were considered to be of the highest personal integrity and honor.  These were men who you could look to for inspiration and whose behaviors were to be emulated. 

Society is evolving as it always does, a thing driven by technological and environmental change.  With these changes comes pain of the unexpected variety, the kind of pain that we didn’t know to look for and leaves us feeling lessened and cynical.  A good analogy would be the pain felt when certain childhood beliefs were shattered.  Many of us, including myself cried when we found out.  Something had gone out of our lives, and not in an easy way.  Yet, in retrospect after the pain faded we were glad to have found out.

As a society, we are now experiencing this on a fantastic scale.  Information has become freely available and the minutiae of our heroes’ daily lives are there for us to see.  Every little stumble, every little foible, every little indiscretion, are all laid before us to examine.

And it hurts.  It hurts in a very adult and diminishing way.  We look at the throng of USian Presidential contenders and we know each and every one of their flaws.  Deep partisan fighting and the willingness of contenders to use this information against each other leaves us disgusted and feeling a little hopeless.  Blindly we cast about for a hero that can put all of these petty politicos in their place.  Where is our Presidential Superman (or Superwoman)?  Where is the person that can make us feel clean and proud again?

The truth is this:  That person doesn’t exist and never did.  That age, the age of the clean hero, is past and nothing can bring it back.  The question is what can we do?  How do we clear the ache from our hearts?

Moving Forward

The first thing we have to do is give up on the idea that we can put the genie back into the bottle.  We cannot.  We are connected and that trend is only going to increase.  The availability of information is not the problem.  Not to be trite, but information will, when we get our hearts right, set us free.  We must stop trying to limit and control information, especially when the Government thinks it is for our own good.

Next we need to change how we think about heroes and leaders.  No longer can we allow a single small incident or foible to stain an otherwise good leader to the extent that they cannot be elected.  I call this the “Yaaaarg/Monkey Business Rule.” While I don’t feel strongly about Howard Dean positive or negative, he didn’t deserve to be media-ed (yes I verbed that) to death because of a goofy and overly enthusiastic outburst.

Nor can we force our leaders into positions that WE never allow them to change, even if the circumstances and information available would lead a reasonable man to do so. 

I call this the “flip-flopper rule”.  It may be proper to castigate a leader for changing opinions only to suit public opinion, but it is NOT right to castigate a leader for making a reasoned and thought out decision to change his mind.  Leaders cannot function without having the flexibility needed in decision making to rule.

Imagine having to live your life by the decisions you first made as an adult.  “Man, I ain’t ever getting married!” or “I’ll quit smoking when they pry the cigarettes out of my cold dead hands” or “I don’t ever want any children” or any other declarations young men and women make.  Does it make you a flip-flopper to decide to quit smoking or start a family?  No, it doesn’t.  They are rational, intelligent decisions.  Don’t shackle our leaders with a mindless insistence that they never change position.

For our own sakes we need recognize that people can be heroes and still be human.  We need to accept in our hearts that our leaders are human as well.  We must weigh them, good and bad and pick those that will do the best for us both in government and society.  We cannot continue to demand perfection.  Generations past understood that everyone was human.  They had the benefit of not knowing EXACTLY how human our heroes and leaders were, but they understood it.

We need to be able to say with reassurance and comfort:  “That person will do well by us and shows good judgment when it counts.”  I ask you not to lower your standards, but to bring them up to date with the connected way society is today.  Have compassion, have understanding.  No one can claim to have lead a perfect life, and we must not ask our leaders to do what we ourselves cannot.  Forgive our heroes and leaders the small, insignificant transgressions. 

With that understanding, you will begin to see that we are not as bereft of heroes as we had thought.